Nondual authors and presenters invited include Jerry Katz, Scott Kiloby and Karen McPhee for 90 minute experiential workshops as well as returnees Will Joel Friedman, Trent Leighton, Brian Theriault, and Gary Nixon. Honore France & Carmen Rodriquez will also be doing a special presentation on First Nations awakening.

Presentation Program (Preliminary)
Thursday — June 16

9:00 a.m. Opening

9:10 a.m. Gary Nixon, Ph.D. University of Lethbridge, Alberta. Embracing the Ongoing Art of Dying: Working through Issues of Mind, Heart, and the Guts after Awakening.

10:10 a.m. Break

10:30 a.m. KEYNOTE PRESENTATON: Jerry Katz, Halifax, Nova Scotia. What is Nonduality All About?: A Tour of the Landscape.

1) Gary Nixon, Ph.D. is a transpersonal psychologist, and has been on faculty with the Addictions Counselling Program at the University of Lethbridge since 1998. Gary has been influenced by a long line of Eastern and Western nondual teachers such as Osho, Krishnamurti, Trungpa, Adi Da, Papaji, Nisargadatta, Adyashanti and the works of western transpersonal writers such as Wilber, and Almaas. Gary is passionate about the transformatinal opportunity of abiding in nondual being in day to day life, and enjoys putting out the invitation of the realization of the open secret of nondual being to people without old time notions of rarity and exclusivity. He has been facilitating nondual groups over the last ten years.
Title: Embracing the Ongoing Art of Dying: Working Through Issues of the Mind, Heart, and Guts after Awakening

Even after so-called “awakening”, fixated concepts, understandings, knowledge and subtle graspings of self in the mind, dark emotions and stories around the heart, and primal fears around self survival, all need to be continued to let go of, to enjoy the gaze of eternity and the sublime radiant mystery in each moment. The opportunty and invitation after awakening is to emmbrace the ongoing art of dying and lettng go as we see how we continue to grasp and hold on in even subtler and subtler ways.

2) Jerry Katz hails from Halifax, Nova Scotia. As a child, Jerry Katz became fascinated that he was simply aware. Up to age 10, he received spontaneous initiations into his existence as I Am. In 1977 he became stabilized in the knowing of I Am. Some years later that knowing dissolved. In 1997, he envisioned a globally understood and accessible nonduality. At the time, nonduality was a word and teaching associated with academia, ashrams, and certain scriptural works. Katz saw the possibility of a nonduality talked about at kitchen tables and in supermarket line-ups. Toward realizing this vision, in 1998 Katz started the first independent nonduality website (Nonduality.com) and email forum (Nonduality Salon). Both are still active. He has written over a hundred book reviews and is editor of The Nonduality Highlights newsletter and the book, One: Essential Writings on Nonduality. Katz’s vision of an accessible nonduality is manifesting into a reality. Along the way, he has shaped a landscape of nonduality characterized by the elaboration of nondual perspectives, and by adding the names of ordinary people to lists of famous sages. In these and other ways he is showing that nonduality is a commonplace teaching intended for everyone. There are now many brands of a people’s nonduality. Katz supports, promotes, and encourages them all.
Title: What Is Nonduality All About?: A Tour of the Landscape

The primary inquiry of this session is, “What is nonduality all about?” The primary activity of this session is to tour of part of the landscape of nonduality. How is nonduality defined?What is the timeline of what may be called the nonduality movement over the last hundred years?What are some nondual perspectives? As these questions open to vast rooms of knowledge, attendees will be encouraged to contribute to the details and development of the main points. All the while, the primary inquiry, “What is nonduality all about?”, will be a constant reminder for one’s consideration. Is nonduality about nondual knowledge? What’s going on in the world of nonduality these days and what part are you playing? This session will orient attendees to the expanding world of nonduality. Whether one is inclined to shout out that there’s no such thing as nonduality, or whether one is inclined to intentionally practice and teach methods of nondual awareness – or both … or neither – this session will leave attendees confident about shaping and re-shaping the landscape of nonduality without losing the sense of what nonduality is all about. (Or with the loss of the sense of what nonduality is all about. Nonduality can be known as a tricky world once one constructs a land within it and tries to reside there.) Join us at the Paradoxica 2011 Conference in the never-never-land of nonduality. An emphasis will be upon the nondual perspectives of literature, music, ecology, and you.

3) Brian Theriault M.Ed. C.C.C. Brian has been on a moment to moment paradoxical journey of awakening where the peaks and valleys of ordinary life do not have to be sought for nor renounced but met with the open clarity of who and what we are as human beings. Brian embraces a nondual-transpersonal approach in his clinical work counselling clients in Stage II and III addiction recovery and trauma resolution work. He resonates with the profound mystical teachings of Osho, Lau Tzu and Zen.
Title: Dancing in a Trembling Universe: Abiding in Nondual Consciousness

There is a saying in the nondual community that if you really want to know how awake somebody is, just go ask their partner. Awakening to the truth of who we are can be a tremendously exhilarating experience but the rubber really hits the road when we begin to abide in this realization in our everyday lives. Dishes need to be done, bills need to be paid and relationships need attending to. Even though we may have had a huge awakening experience the separate self can continue to resurrect itself in many ways. Just when we think we have it all figured out, life has a way of crashing down on us and tossing us right back into the dream state of separation. The next moment is never guaranteed. And so, a “second descent” is called for where we allow the gift of awakening to penetrate every facet of our beings; where we embrace the paradox that the self, which does not exist, strangely, still has to surrender and give itself up in each and every moment. How awake we are right now, this very moment, becomes the question. The teachings of Lao Tzu invite us to consider embracing the wisdom of insecurity, love and humility; whereby we are simultaneously anchored in the absolute nature of who we are and vulnerable to the natural rhythms of ordinary living. This presentation will consist of discussion, sharing and a question period.

4) Will Joel Friedman, Ph.D. is from Pleasanton, California, U.S.A. Will Joel Friedman is a journeyman psychologist, licensed since 1987 and working in the field of Psychology since 1977. He is doing what works in standing in awareness, honoring intuitive wisdom, and moving with the flow of Spirit. He practices Presence-centered therapy with a strong emphasis upon nondual presence, witnessing, inquiry approaches (e.g., belief-role-story-pattern-identity deconstruction), EMDR, building strong internal resources and emotional capacities, taking in the good, and sensory awareness/ experiencing. This one still knows nothing. He welcomes, surrenders and celebrates everything, purely engaging in being and doing what is loved. No one in particular home, only Home. He is on the Editorial Board of Paradoxica: Journal of Nondual Psychology. Will welcomes feedback directly—email: drwilljoel@comcast.netThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and the website: www.willjoelfriedman.com
Title: After Awakening: Pointers to Lives Lived in Silent Profound Presence

This presentation is an experiential, interactive, and conversational approach with openness for questions and answers. Psychiatrist, author and Buddhist meditation teacher Jack Engler (2004) observes qualities that keep us alive, are of the awakened mind and cultivate awakening, specifically joy, generosity, compassion, curiosity, truthfulness, serenity, equanimity, wakefulness, one-pointedness, and impeccability. Muriel Rukeyser declares: The universe is made of stories, not atoms. Dovetailing Engler’s and Rukeyser’s inspirations, in Friedman’s presentation, each quality is evoked and embodied in transpersonal anecdotes and a Zen/ Sufi contemporary universal story. These lived experiences all point to the timeless, awakened Presence that exudes service and contribution, kindness and gratitude while Being, Love and Awareness itself, are effortlessly unveiled in the ever-present, transparent True Nature.

“The energies that keep us alive are joy, generosity, compassion, curiosity, truthfulness, serenity, equanimity, wakefulness, one-pointedness, and impeccability—the qualities of mind that Buddhist teaching sometimes calls paramitas, or perfections, or sometimes bojjhangas, the factors of enlightenment. They are qualities of awakened mind as well as qualities that can be cultivated to aid awakening.” —Jack Engler, “Just As It Is”, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Spring 2004

5) Honoré France and Carmen Rodriguez: Dr. Honoré France (Ani-yun-wiya First Nation), Ph.D. primarily teaches courses in group dynamics, multiculturalism and research methodology. His current research and teaching interests are cross-cultural issues, Islamic identity, ecopsychology, counselling residential school survivors and child development. He has presented over fifty scholarly papers in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia; published over eighty articles and studies; and has written several books on counselling issues and practices. His newest textbook, Nexus: Transpersonal approaches to groups, was published in the spring of 2002 by Temeron Books. He is a tenured professor at the University of Victoria, sits on the editorial board of Guidance & Counselling and works as a facilitator for Inter-Tribal Health Authority.

Dr. María del Carmen Rodríguez de France, Ph.D. has been a visitor on this land for the past 14 years. Of Kickapoo First Nation and Spanish ancestry, Carmen was born and raised in beautiful Monterrey, México. Her career spans twenty-five years with participation in a broad range of educational, community service, and research activities. Carmen holds a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology and a Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies both from the University of Victoria where she now facilitates courses on Indigenous Knowledge in the capacity of Assistant Professor in the Indigenous Education Unit housed in the Faculty of Education. Additional to facilitating courses at the university, Carmen has worked with Aboriginal youth and adults in diverse teaching and clinical contexts, Tsa-kwa-luden Healing Lodge (Cape Mudge Reserve), and has published articles on similar topics.
Title: Within Indigenous Context: Transpersonal, Circle Work and the Medicine Wheel

The Transpersonal psycho-therapeutic approach embraces the holistic philosophy of Indigenous healing, which offers, along with the inclusion of traditional practices a cultural sensitive basis for working with a variety of issues, including addictions, abuse and constructive living in “both worlds.” As Indigenous therapists, we describe our work with Indigenous clients in leading healing circles in which we use art, dreams, drama, nature and storytelling among other strategies to help clients find meaning and a new way of being in the world as an Indigenous person. We will use clinical examples of our work as it applies to issues around addictions, along with other challenges having to do with marginalization and historical trauma. An understanding of Indigenous philosophy and demonstrated strategies is important for helpers working in the Indigenous community.

6) Pearl Yip is a satsang teacher and the author of Journey to the Eternal: Returning Home to God. She also works jointly with her healing partner to facilitate Healing Satsangs with Divine Beings and Ascended Masters. During Healing Satsangs, Pearl uses her gifts of sight and Divine connection to lead the sessions into healing stillness.

Aldeene has been working with the Divine Realm for approximately 8 years. Before she ventured into this healing work, she tuned into the Angelic Realm to help people.
Title: The True Trinity

The True Trinity is between Outer Consciousness, Inner Beingness, and the Physical Body; one needs to be connected to all three to journey to Oneness.

7) Scott Kiloby, Creator of the Natural Rest Presence Method. Scott Kiloby is reaching out to all people who are suffering or seeking or cannot seem to find fulfillment in this life no matter where they go or what they do. He is communicating to them that freedom is available and that it is actually contained in their very presence, yet it is overlooked. The benefits of recognizing presence are living with a mind that is at peace, a heart that is full of love and compassion for others, and an end of looking for happiness outside ourselves. Scott Kiloby is the author of Love’s Quiet Revolution: The End of the Spiritual Search and Reflections of the One Life: Daily Pointers to Enlightenment. He is also the creator of a new addictions recovery method called the Natural Rest Presence Method. His book, by the same name, is scheduled for release in 2011. Scott’s main website is www.kiloby.com. It contains writings, videos, and audio interviews with a wide diversity of teachers, authors, scientists, and psychologists. Scott travels across the U.S. and overseas giving talks in which those attending experience nondual presence. In these meetings, positions and beliefs are challenged, including beliefs about the self, others, and the world, and also our ideas about spirituality. This leaves those attending completely open to allow the present moment to unfold in a new way, free of identification with thought. The point of the meetings is to allow each person attending to go home and uncover for themselves the freedom inherent in presence.
Title: The Natural Rest Presence Method: Finding Recovery Through Presence

After a twenty year battle with addiction, Scott Kiloby began to seek healing in a different way. Instead of turning away from negative thoughts and feelings of the past and looking toward the future for release, he began to face his suffering directly. Scott made a dramatic shift by allowing all negative and positive energies of thought, emotion, and sensation to be as they are. He began to rest and recognize presence as the stable foundation in which these energies temporarily come and go. Through inquiring into the nature of the belief in separation and how it arises, whilst making presence primary in his life, Scott discovered that the key to release from the addictive cycle exists in the one place addicts refuse to look—the present moment.Throughout the years, as Scott began to write and talk on the subject of nonduality in the United States and overseas, he remained silent about what he had discovered regarding freedom from addiction. He couldn’t find the right words. In the Spring of 2010, those words began to flow, culminating in a new book called, The Natural Rest Presence Method. Scott will be speaking at the Paradoxica Nondual Psychology conference on June 16, 17, 2011 on this subject.

8) Trent Leighton PhD. has spent his professional career dedicated to the development of a mental health model based upon the nondual realizations of the World’s enlightened and awakened masters. The evolution of this process has taken him through a wide breadth of spiritual and psychological teachings that have been “lived” in the lab of daily life and translated into effective counseling practices. After years of creating a successful private practice in New York City, Trent just recently finished two years working with indigenous villages in rural Alaska applying the realizations of nonduality to those struggling with active addiction, and now has moved to Lethbridge.
Title: Beyond the DSMIV TR: A Nondual Approach to Mental Health Issues

Originally published in 1952 with 108 diagnoses, the diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorders, or “DSM”, has since ballooned into the bible of western psychology; replete with over 365 official diagnoses and five major revisions. At the heart of this “A-theoretical” tome is the largely unquestioned assumption of a separate personality base, or self, inflicted with everything from depression to body dysmorphia, mania to munchausen’s by proxy. Utilizing the core nondual awareness that a separate identity can’t exist within the unicity of the Absolute, this presentation will reconfigure the “DSM” in light of the absence of a phenomenal personage to have a mental disorder. Tracing the multi-axial system of diagnosis backward, a new horizon of possibility will be opened up that views mental maladies as the inherent consequence of establishing an individualistic identity that is not possible and, in fact, is the very origin of suffering.

9) Jason Solowoniuk MEd., C.C.C. Ten years ago, after a collision with the infinite, Jason went on a journey to understand the ego’s dissolution. Filled with fear, panic, and anxiety, but swept under a current of noumenal energy Jason has learned to relax into being and through perpetual surrender has utilized the teachings of non-being integrating them into his counselling and teaching philosophy. He currently conducts research and teaches in the Addictions program at the University of Lethbride, while practicing Nondual psychotherapy at Lethbridge Family Services, in Lethbridge Alberta, Canada.

Arron Kardolus-Wilson. Following decades of seeking and finding divinity in the world, Arron realized that this same divinity was at the core of her being. Aaron is now on a journey of deconstructing the illusions of separateness and is very grateful for the supportive role played by Jason’s Nondual psychotherapeutic approach. In the hopes of applying her growing wakefulness and not-yet-abiding nondual awareness to both education and vocation, Arron is starting undergraduate studies at the University of Lethbridge this fall.

Title: Beyond Gender Transition: A Nondual Approach to the Releasement from the Trap of Identity

This presentation will illuminate the Nondual psychotherapeutic approach in the transformation and releasement from a gendered identity and embracement of Nondual beingness. Elucidation of the therapeutic process will be presented by both client and therapist highlighting key client insights arising from clinical sessions and transpersonal shifts experienced outside of therapy that continue to shape a context for living a life informed by Nondual awareness.

10) Karen McPhee spent many years on a spiritual path, eventually finding her way to the teachings of Eckhart Tolle. In 1999, Eckhart invited Karen to teach on his behalf. Since that time, she has continued to deepen her understanding of the true nature of existence. Her message is that freedom is here now as one’s abiding nature. Through direct investigation, this nature is recognized. This recognition naturally brings about an end to suffering and seeking.
Title: DoItYourSelf Realization: Ending the Search by Recognizing True Nature

When we cease relying on external authorities (teachers, teachings, etc.) only then can we truly recognize our abiding nature and thereby end seeking and suffering. In this satsang, Karen will invite you into the recognition of your natural state of ever-present, radiant freedom. This is an immediate recognition, not a long, drawn-out process. There is no theory or teaching offered, but rather the direct experience of the non-dual state.

For more information and registration: http://paradoxica.ca/index.php/conference